The game industry is buzzing about Sony's upcoming portable game device. Everybody is talking about it. Everybody except Nintendo. There is a very important reason for this, and it involves Apple.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is not providing his impressions, publicly at least, about the NGP. The reason is that because when the Apple iPad was unveiled last year, Iwata gave his opinion of the machine. "I didn't say it with any positive and negative connotation," Iwata remarked at an investor's meeting today (via Japan Real Time).

The unveiling of the new Apple iPad earlier this week has a lot of people excited. Nintendo…
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His comments were translated in English, and that story then gained enough traction to have his comment translated back into Japanese. This, Iwata said, "distorted" the nuance. "So then it became a story about how I trashed the iPad as just a bigger iPod Touch."

Internet drama broke out over Iwata's comments, causing Apple fanboy fury. "I read these remarks online and the situation had become almost surreal," Iwata added. "So my view now is that it's not good to even give my first impression."

Not only did Iwata refrain from giving his opinion of the device, he also did not say what Nintendo would do to counter the NGP with its own upcoming portable, the Nintendo 3DS. According to Bloomberg, Iwata said, "We're not the kind of company who thinks about how we are going to take on another company's product."

The Nintendo president did concede that Nintendo's and Sony's approaches to their upcoming handhelds are certainly not the same. "We are trying to appeal to customers from different directions," Iwata said. "The ones who will decide which is best are the customers."

Nintendo isn't the only one playing it cool about providing opinions about the NGP. PlayStation Portable creator Ken Kutaragi is also being tight-lipped about the new portable.